Any Place I Hang My Hat Read online

  “You’re getting it. All I’m saying—” What had begun looking like a deformed hand made of butter cream was taking shape, becoming an intricate lace pattern of flowers spilling over the sides of an urn. “—is that life goes on. You said the relationship was going nowhere. You wanted to get rid of him. So what’s the dif if he beat you to it? Other than the blow to your ego, of course. Look, I understand catching him with another woman was a shock. And so was his beating you to doing the dump. A bruised ego is incredibly hurtful so close to your thirtieth birthday. But if he was on the way out, was it really so terrible that he beat you to the exit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tatty finished a squiggle in the middle of a fat rose or maybe a peony and set down the pastry bag. She turned to me. “You don’t know what?” I didn’t answer. “You don’t know if it matters who left who or whooom, as you’re so fond of saying. Or are you having second thoughts?” She bent over to stretch. Her long body folded neatly at the waist. Touching the floor with her palms would have been easy, but she hated having to wash again after a work break, so she simply rested the tips of her nails on the tops of her kitchen clogs. When she stood she said, “Okay. I’m sounding too blithe about this no-more-John business, aren’t I?”

  My feet hurt, so I gave up trying to out-stand her and dragged over a chair. “Yes, way too blithe,” I said, plunking myself down. “I mean, it lasted more than two years. I spent time with his family. I was crazy about them. I introduced him to Aunt Linda and Uncle Sparky. We were ... whatever.”

  “Serious,” Tatty said and quickly twirled a piece of paper into a cone, stuck in a different-size tube, and gooped in a spoonful of ivory buttercream. “He was your intended.”

  “Something like that,” I admitted.

  “I can’t understand why you let it drag on for so long.” We’d gone through this before, so I just compressed my lips, but Tatty was busy with a lace leaf and didn’t see. “The staying power thing?” she asked.

  “Maybe. I know you think it’s my problem, not a guy’s. But I can’t afford to rush into anything without being sure, you know, that whoever he is really accepts me, my background, which is also me. Forget my probably having a lot of subnormal intelligence genes. I could have ... I don’t know what you’d call it. Predisposed-to-felony genes. And that’s just my father’s side. Plus I don’t exactly come with a dowry. But all this is moot because John never came close to proposing. We went together and went together and everyone thought of us as a couple except him. Maybe me, too. But right around the time I felt really sure he had the staying power, the relationship got the air sucked out of it. I’m thinking, Shit, something’s missing. And next thing, he’s sleeping with a Brazilian socialite.”

  “You don’t know if she’s Brazilian or a socialite,” Tatty said. “Maybe she’s a trés chic hooker who rents herself out for cultural events.”

  “He told me I’m afraid of intimacy,” I told her.

  Tatty set down the paper pastry cone and picked up her cloth bag. “Well,” she said, “he wasn’t wrong.”

  It was too late for a calming breath. My head felt as if it would split from the force of the anger I felt. “Fuck you, Tatty! You’re not exactly the Queen of Self-disclosure.” Unmoved, she squiggled out the contour of a ribbon and began filling it in with tiny grosgrain-like striations. The blood wouldn’t leave my head. I wanted to throw that spoiled, rich high school kid’s six-thousand-dollar sweet sixteen cake onto the floor. Instead, I picked up the paper cone, opened it, and licked off about six thousand calories’ worth of sugared buttercream.

  “You didn’t put me in your article,” Freddy Carrasco muttered. He kept his voice down because we were sitting in In Depth’s holding pen. Suddenly I was reconsidering the wisdom of having asked him to meet me at the office. Okay, I didn’t have much time to devote to him, but my first meeting with him might have been a charm. This time around, he could show serious derangement, with tics and twitches and twirly eyes like Judge Doom in Roger Rabbit.

  Except for the computer on the receptionist’s rickety desk, the space could double for the front room of a sleazy funeral parlor in a noir film. Its beige rug was so old it had turned ashen and was flaking at the edges. We sat on two of seven extremely fake Chippendale chairs, perhaps from our Revered Founder’s dining room during the years of his first wife; he’d probably smashed the eighth over her head, or vice versa. Periodically, the receptionist, Mrs. Snarck—who corrected anyone who called her Ms. Snarck—turned from her rip-roaring life on eBay to glare at me for daring to receive in a reception area.

  I’d decided not to bring Freddy back to my desk on the off chance he’d start bellowing tabloid headlines the whole staff would hear: I am Senator Bowles’s son! That alone could easily send my stock as prospective senior editor right into the toilet. (Toilet was one of many of Grandma Lil’s proscribed words, a list that also included mucous, vagina, penis, and, if she’d known it existed, smegma.)

  Anyway, I lowered my voice. “I told you right from the start there wasn’t a chance in hell that In Depth would publish anything about a party crasher making a paternity accusation against a candidate.”

  “Did you even try to get something in?”

  “No. Listen, Freddy, you seemed sincere when I met with you that one time at Starbucks. Not crazy. Maybe I would have called a colleague somewhere and said, Hey, check this guy out. His story isn’t for us, but maybe you guys could use it. But then you didn’t return my call for ages.” Just in case I was emitting passive-aggressive, dumped-girlfriend rays by subconsciously equating Freddy’s not calling with John’s, I added: “I left a message saying I needed to talk to you. This isn’t a leisurely business. The word news implies new information. By the next day or next week, it’s nostalgia.”

  “It was spring break,” he replied. A little shrug, a small smile: For just an okay-looking guy, he had confidence in his charm.

  “Come off it, Freddy,” I said. “You’re going to a commuter college and you have a day job. Do you expect me to picture you leaving some dorm and heading down 1-95 with a surfboard?” His head dropped a fiftieth of an inch, so I added: “I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Thanks.” Though his head was flowerpot-shaped, with his hair serving as a low, grassy growth, in the flesh he did look amazingly like that one photo of Thom Bowles on the fencing team. Even though each of them pretty much conformed to the coloring of their stereotypes—Bowles with blue eyes and leathery western white guy skin, Freddy with bittersweet-chocolate eyes and intermediate Latino brown skin—they could easily have been father and son. On the other hand, Fernando Carrasco could simply be a liar with a square jaw. “So,” I said, “how come you didn’t tell me about your juvenile record?”

  He sucked in a shocked breath, then slowly breathed it out. “How did you hear about it?” he inquired, pretty equably.

  “I can’t reveal my sources,” I said. That line was always invigorating, making me feel like Woodward and Bernstein instead of a writer at a self-important weekly. If In Depth had an escutcheon, it would bear the words NULLA SCIENTIA SINE TAEDIO on a field of bleakest gray. No knowledge without boredom.

  “You heard about it from someone from Bowles’s campaign,” he stated. “It has to be.” I kept quiet. “Okay,” he said, “but I need to know that anything I say will be off the record or whatever you call it.”

  “I won’t publish or quote anything you tell me. It will be confidential, between you and me.”

  “And you won’t write something like The twenty-one-year-old man, who has a sealed juvenile record, currently attending the City College of New York, wishes to remain anonymous... .”

  “Of course not. So did you spend any time at a facility?”

  “No. I was lucky. I had a really good lawyer. He made a case that I was a basically decent kid who got involved with a bad bunch of guys. That was pretty much true, although not an excuse. But I did have good
grades and was potential college material. We did it late. Broke into an electronics store, I mean. Nobody was at the store, nobody got hurt. The judge went for his argument.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Electronics. Cameras, handhelds. A ThinkPad: That was strictly my deal.”

  “This was when your mother was alive?”

  Freddy’s shoulders tried a shrug, but wound up in more of a shudder. “Yeah. Two years before she died. The lawyer was five thousand dollars. She wouldn’t have said a word about how much he charged if I hadn’t asked.”

  “What did she die of?” I asked expectantly. Would he say A broken heart? I did have a weakness for tearjerking dying-mother scenes.

  “Heatstroke. Can you believe it? All she was doing was coming home from work. She was an accountant, a CPA. After I was born, she used the money she got from William Bowles for day care and to live on while she finished college. She worked at a small firm, but it had a really good reputation. Anyhow, she had a seizure on the subway. By the time they got her out of there and over to the emergency room at Columbia-Presbyterian, she was dead.” Freddy tried to change the subject by not talking, eyeing the back issues that sat on the glass-topped, stainless-steel-bottomed coffee table, scanning the indices that formed our covers. The In Depths had been more tossed than fanned out. The table was probably an oddment from our Revered Founder’s second marriage. “It’s terrible not to be able to say good-bye,” he finally said. His face fell into sadness, his brows drawing together, his lower lip pushing against the upper, which pressed down the corners of his mouth. I tried not to hope his voice would crack with lost-mother grief. “Her last words to me were ‘I’ll buy a nice piece of fish for supper.’ Weird.”

  “A lot worse than weird,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Naturally I remembered that Freddy’s mother had not possessed any evidence that she’d received money from Thom Bowles’s father, William Bryson Bowles, to shut up and go away. And since the senator definitely wasn’t up for a “Call me Dad, son” segment on a Barbara Walters special, and if indeed the paternity business wasn’t a fantasy or scam by either Freddy or his mother, I had to ask: “So what can I do for you?”

  “Help me,” he said. Maybe he thought I was on the verge of saying Get out because he quickly added: “Look ... Do you mind if I call you Amy?”

  “No.” He’d probably heard the same squib I’d heard on Eyewitness News, about how saying the name of the person with whom you’re speaking leads to a 38 percent increase in their acceptance of you.

  “So this is the thing, Amy. If I wanted to cause a real stink, I could go to one of those right-wing guys’ websites and post a message. Trust me, in a few days it could build to something really big and slimy. But I’m not looking for money. My mother did okay and she left me enough that if I wanted to continue my education, or even—I don’t know—buy a studio apartment in an okay neighborhood, I could. If I wanted to frighten the senator, I could follow him around the country and find a way to speak to him one-on-one and say enough to scare the crap out of him. All I want is for him to acknowledge that I exist and that I’m his son. It’s not that I want a daddy. Even if I did, I wouldn’t want Thomas Bowles because he’s full of shit.”

  “Actually, even if you disagree with his positions, he’s fairly substantive—”

  “Substantive?” Freddy demanded. “He sounds like an asshole with too many advisers to me.” He paused. “But who cares what Thom Bowles is. It doesn’t matter. My mother was a realist. She knew that up against people like that family, she didn’t have a chance. So after Thom Bowles dropped her when she wouldn’t take money for an abortion, she heard from the senator’s old man. I guess she scared both of them because suddenly what happens? Thom Bowles is gone from New York. She gets money. Besides being a realist, she was a serious Catholic. Abortion was out of the question. So you get the picture of her? Practical. Moral.”

  “Got it. But Freddy, are you going to tell me a woman of her fine character would never, ever sleep with two men in the same month? Are you going to tell me that if she once got too friendly with some quasi-lowlife—as many, many terrific women, including me, have been known to do in their tender years—that she’d tell you: Fernando, your father’s in Sing Sing serving two consecutive life sentences for murder? Or would she say: Your father’s a Princeton graduate, a successful entrepreneur, and a United States senator?”

  “My mother would have told me the truth.” He had the raised chin and the straight gaze of the true believer. “What I’m asking is ... Look, I know I have a lot of strengths, including intelligence. But I also know I’m not sophisticated yet. From the way you act, and because you really understand the political world, you are. Without being snobby or condescending.”

  “Thank you. It’s funny, though. I always think of sophisticated as being people who are waved in by doormen at clubs or who speculate in euro futures. Except okay, by your definition, I’m sophisticated in that I pretty much understand how the world works.” I took out my cell phone, clasping it as if it were some enchanted amulet that would advise me what to do. I suddenly realized that admitting to sophistication was probably an unsophisticated act. “Give me a minute to think.” He studied me as I thought. Flattering. Inhibiting. “Do me a favor, Freddy. Take a ten-minute walk and then come back up.”

  He left and I hurried back to my desk. How do you undisown? How do you get a parent who wants no part of you to say, Okay, kid, you’re mine? And would that satisfy Freddy Carrasco? Or would he also want Hey, you look like a really good guy? Or more? Maybe we could go fishing or something, get to know one another. Brooke and April? They’re like Snow White and Rose Red, cardboard characters, sweet but—just between us—boring as hell. I want to concentrate on you, Fred. I want to make up for all the hurt I’ve caused you.

  So I made a couple of calls. The old goy network. Alumnae of Ivey-Rush are, as our alma mater says, ever faithful, ever true. To the school, to one another. Well, it wasn’t 100 percent, what with whiners, bitches, and the women who perpetually feel fucked. But I went back to my cubicle, typed my password into the Ivey website alumnae page. Moments later, I was on the phone with Margaret Jane “Mickey” Maller, ’61, attorney-at-law, a grande dame of the New York family-law bar. Naturally, Mickey said she remembered me with perfect clarity from the meeting last April at Pucky Violett’s place. Yes, certainly she’d be willing to listen to my nomination for her next pro bono case. He’s claiming Thomas Bowles ... ? Hmm. Hmmmm. Seems like a stable young man? Tell him to be at my office at five-fifteen on Thursday. No, no, Amy. No trouble at all.

  Ergo, Mickey Maller was another name on my list of people I would owe big-time, forever. I can’t say that when I met Freddy back in the reception area and told him about his upcoming appointment with her, his look of amazement, followed by a barrage of thank-yous, made my effort worthwhile. Well, I guess it did. His decision that it wouldn’t be cool to kiss me as he left touched me, as did his near inability to stop shaking my hand and beaming. Mrs. Snarck, the receptionist, forsook what was probably a major crackle-glass auction on eBay to observe us through the slits that were her eyes. “Freddy,” I told him, “the cloud may not have a silver lining. Ms. Maller may tell you there isn’t any case. Okay? God does miracles. Lawyers do not.”

  After another exchange of thank-yous and you’re-welcomes, I went back to my computer. But instead of plugging away on my current yawner of an opening paragraph, I began searching for variations on Phyllis, Moscowitz, Morris, Lincoln, and—as per Uncle Sparky—Veronica.

  Chapter Seven

  I WAS THAT annoying perfect attendance type. All through P.S. 97 and Ivey-Rush, I never missed a day of school, slogging through the snow with bronchitis, sitting in class with chin pressed to chest to stifle the coughs that could get me sent out. Okay, I missed two days of college, succumbing to an E. coli sandwich masquerading as chicken salad, and a day of journalism school for Grandma Lil’s funeral.


  To announce I was taking a few days off for “family business” was a huge deal: for me. Not one eyelash blinked at In Depth. No expulsion from the magazine, with me cringing like Michelangelo’s Eve departing Eden.

  So on an unseasonably cold Wednesday, I began the search for my mother. Walking down to the Forty-second Street library, I told myself, Relax. You’re a damn good reporter, in that excessively cheery way successful people buck up hard-luck friends.

  I’d done a preliminary search on the Web and found a few Phyllis Moscowitzes. As far as I could ascertain, none of them would have been anywhere around seventeen years old in 1973, the year I’d been born. Chances were good that if her IQ was even slightly higher than double digits, my mother would have had the brains to change her name. To get anywhere in cyberspace, I would need something more: a date of birth, a Social Security number.

  Also, I was a fool when it came to the allure of libraries. Most of the good memories of my childhood were set in two places, the playground and the public library. At Ivey, I’d gotten into the habit of working in the library, in part to get away from the constant presence of the other girls. Growing up on the Lower East Side, my zone of privacy outdoors was about two and a half inches. Inside, however, I was so used to escaping Grandma Lil—as well as reality—by saying I had to study that the mere physical feel of a book came to be pleasurable.

  The library at Fifth and Forty-second was a researcher’s dream, despite its nightmarish waits and the occasional churlish, book-banging employee. The Web was often too rich, offering 517,000 choices. I always had a sense that the best answer was lurking prohibitively far away, if only I had patience to scroll through eight hundred pages. Here, I had to rely on my own mind and intuition, although that assumed a productive search. There had been many days when all I had to show for my efforts were the specks of crumbly old magazines all over my shirt.